


you’re a four star feature

by unlovelySara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ... more or less, 50s au, 50s slang, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, mechanic!Gendry, warning: extreme fluff, without the diners because Gendry can't afford 'em
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 17:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11879622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlovelySara/pseuds/unlovelySara
Summary: the one in which Gendry’s a grumpy mechanic, Arya has stolen her dad’s car and blown a fuse in the process and they’re both in desperate need of someone to teach them some basic flirting skillsORthe 50s!AU you didn’t need





	you’re a four star feature

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction was initially supposed to be something like [this](http://catellynstark.tumblr.com/post/154352611368/how-come-no-one-has-ever-written-a-gendrya) but, as usual, I’m not capable to stick to my original plans #sorrynotsorry
> 
> (50s slang glossary and random 50s facts [here](http://recite-upon-her-flesh.tumblr.com/post/164491904978/so-yep-here-i-am-again-in-the-mighty-asoiafgot), because the final notes won’t show them >.>)

When Gendry re-emerged from the garage’s old toilet the radio was singing that god-awful song that his mom loved so much, the one with the creepy sisters bleating over an annoying piano; he rolled his eyes and proceeded to wash his hands as fast as possible, so he could change station before having to endure the whole tune.  
It had taken seven attempts before he could find something he liked – most precisely, _Rock Around The Clock_ – but he was able to enjoy it only for a few seconds: loud voices were coming from the entrance, as if somebody was having an animated discussion right under his nose, so he sighed and braced himself for whatever demanding customer had just come.

* * *

   
“I told ya, it’s my dad’s car and I think I blew a fuse! I’d check it myself but I don’t wanna get dirt on my threads”  
The old man looked her up and down, as if to check if all that carefulness while handling her clothes was really worth it, then asked her a question she hated.  
“You sure you can drive?”  
The girl had snorted, counted until ten to regain a bit of patience – her mother would have been so proud of that display of good manners – and tried to answer him with the calmest voice she could muster up after such a stupid assumption.  
“I’m _seventeen_ and yes, I got my license – care to take a look?” she started to rummage in her pockets but the old man stopped her.  
“Listen, miss, who gives me the guarantee you didn’t steal this set of wheels from some poor fella? Looks too much fancy for you”  
“Maybe because I got _these_?!” she finally lost her patience and made the keys tinkle loudly, her vein on the temple almost popping out “Look, are you seriously the only mechanic that works in this place? I cannot deal with you any longer, please just tell me-”  
“… I work here too” came a deep voice from behind her, making her turn her head so fast she could swear her ponytail had whipped her previous interlocutor right between the eyes.  
_Serves you well!_

* * *

   
“Finally somebody talking sense!” the girl had dramatically clasped her hands together, beaming with triumph in his direction, and had quickly reached him; she was a skinny little thing, all dressed up like a James Dean-wannabe – not a bombshell, like Rita Hayworth, Liz Taylor or Marilyn Monroe, no: she was all hard edges like Bette Davis, with eyes too big for her face and Judy Garland’s carefree smile.  
Not a canonical beauty in per se, but she seemed to possess something he couldn’t quite grasp – fierceness, melancholy, recklessness… he didn’t know, but he instantly felt the desperate urge to spend some time with her to better understand what it was.  
“Look, if my old man finds out I took his beloved Chevy… oh, man, you gotta help me!” she almost shrieked with that thick Northern accent of hers, and it took all of his strength not to burst out laughing at that sight.  
“I will, miss; I’m all ears” he assured her with a smile, a smile that faded as soon as he realized how much that car was worth; he tried to hide his discomfort at having a Chevrolet Bel Air parked in Flea Bottom but miserably failed in doing so.  
The girl scrunched up her nose but then ignored him and proceeded to give a triumphant smile to his coworker, as if to say ‘you bugged me enough, now cop a breeze!’; luckily enough, old Tobho Mott took her advice and went straight home, happy to be finally able to take a nap.  
In the meantime Gendry had taken the opportunity to bring the radio from the back of the shop and slip under the Chevy, eager to have that job done as soon as possible.  
“Why you goin’ down there? The car’s got a blown fuse, there’s no use-”  
“Better check the brakes and fluids too” he cut her short, mumbling most to himself than to her.  
“That doesn’t have anything to do with the fuse! I told ya, I’d check it myself but-”  
“Are you a mechanic? The answer’s no, so you better step aside and lemme do my job, _thank you_ ”  
He couldn’t see her but felt her angry eyes on him anyway.  
“… What a wet rag!” she finally conceded, jumping on the same counter he had put the radio on.

* * *

  
With her legs dangling, the girl let her feet move absentmindedly, following the rhythm of a Nat King Cole’s song that was coming from the portable radio and making her chewing-gum pop every once in a while: she had noticed the change in his behavior, the way his jaw had tensed once he had realized she had driven from the rich districts of the city to those slums where apparently he lived.  
He hated rich people, she knew it. She hated them too, but she was part of them so, hey!, what could she do about it?  
“You want a gum?” she offered tentatively, after several minutes of silence, but he declined and she silently snorted.  
_Stupid stubborn bull_ , she thought, then jumped off the counter and dusted off her trousers.  
“I’m goin’ to the drugstore at the corner, be here in 5 minutes or so” she added, but before he could reappear from under the car she had already left the garage.  
  
September in King’s Landing was completely different from the ones she used to spend back in Winterfell: memories of the summer heat were in fact still lingering lazily in the air, making her clothes stick to the skin and drops of sweat run all the way down her back despite October being around the corner.  
She thought of other beads running down a firm jawline, _down, down to a pair of massive arms…_ she shook her head and made her way into the drugstore, the ring of the bell at the front door successfully waking her from her fantasies.  
It was hard to admit it to herself, but her heart had lost a couple of beats when she had turned and seen him; he reminded her of Marlon Brando, with his disheveled hair, high cheekbones and the undershirt full of greasy stains, but his eyes… she thought of her sister and her adoration for Paul Newman, and she suddenly realized where she had seen that gaze before: Rocky Graziano and his tales of survival, that longing for a better life, that tiredness of being an underdog since he had breathed for the first time.  
She felt sad for him.

* * *

  
Gendry was roughly cleaning his hands in a dirty old rag when a clink behind him made him abandon his unsuccessful task: the girl had come back with a couple of Cokes and was handing him one.  
“Not thirsty, thanks” he muttered, but she kept on waving that stupid bottle under his nose.  
“You look like you could really use one, don’t want a bad case of dehydration on my conscience”  
_Dehydra-something, huh?_ , he thought and, if he hadn’t been before, now he was surely pissed off.  
He didn’t attend fancy schools or own fancy cars like her, but worked his ass of in that hovel he kept on calling ‘garage’ – even if instead he would have liked very much to go back to school – because his mother’s job as a waitress didn’t pay enough to make ends meet and his rich dad didn’t want to acknowledge him as his child, and yet he couldn’t enjoy the luxury of someone not teasing him or refusing her charity? That was grand, simply grand.  
“I said that I’m not thirsty,” he almost growled, all flared nostrils “and I sure as hell don’t need your charity, _miss_ ”  
“Oh, so that’s why you’ve looked so constipated ever since you saw the Chevy! I’m one of those spoiled paper shakers, ain’t I?” the girl snarled back, then almost caught him unawares when she threw him a bottle “I did something nice because I wanted to, not because you’re dirty poor and I needed to do my daily good act to feel better”  
Thus said, she jumped again on the counter, opened her own bottle, had a generous sip and dried her mouth on the back of her hand.  
“I just…” she started again, fiddling with the Coke “You reminded me of someone, and I was curious to-”  
“Alright, I’m good ol’ Bobby Baratheon’s illegitimate son! Are you happy, now?!” Gendry finally exploded, making the girl open her eyes wide with fright.  
“… I was goin’ to say Cal Trask but I guess this’ll do” she muttered, then resumed to sip her Coke in silence.  
_Great, I screwed up… again._  
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, then cleared his voice.  
“Look, I-”  
“No need to say you’re sorry”  
“No, miss, look-”  
“Do not ‘miss’ me!” she spat out, looking exactly like a kitten that hisses, arches its back and shows its teeth and claws to make others believe that it’s not scared at all “… just call me by my name”  
“And what would that be?”  
“Arya… Arya Stark”  
_Where had he heard that surname before?_ It sounded quite familiar, but he couldn’t link it to any face – _not that he had ever hung out with rich lads, it would have never been his crowd, but…_  
“I love this song” she had resumed to talk, rising the volume of the radio and letting Elvis sing about hound dogs from the top of his lungs.  
“Me too”  
She had offered him a little smile that had made the breath catch in his throat and begun to quietly sing along with the tune; her voice was a bit husky but nonetheless good, almost too mature for such a tiny girl.  
_Maybe she smokes_ , Gendry concluded and focused again on her choice of clothing: never before had he seen a girl wearing menswear, especially in such a natural way; the red jacket was a bit large for her – maybe she had a brother who had lent it to her? – but her innate self-confidence made up for it.  
He quickly tried to imagine her without the stain of lipstick she was wearing and her ponytail, just a shrimp in a plain tee and jeans, with her hair cut in a bob and the eyes still too big for her face: the image pleased him enough to not make him notice that she had resumed to speak.  
“My sister says she loves Elvis but the only song she likes is _Love Me Tender_ – she always steals my disc to listen to it, I’m sick of it” she snorted, then finished her Coke “She likes Doris Day, Vic Damone, Sinatra… ya know, all that stuff for gramps”  
“Hey, I like Sinatra!” he exclaimed, a bit resentful, redness instantly boiling all over his ears when the girl gave him an amused look as he tried to dissimulate it by hiding behind his bottle.  
“Yeah, I guess ol’ Frank’s kind of cool” she admitted and let the silence fall again between them, silence that after a while he had felt the urge to break.  
“Anyway – the name’s Gendry”

* * *

   
For a couple of seconds Arya toyed with the possibility of teasing him for finally telling her his name, but she had quickly discarded it; he seemed a decent lad and she ought to restrain her sarcasm every once in a while, especially with the question she was about to ask him.  
“So… the mayor’s son, huh?”  
_Ugh, that could have come out way, waaay better_ , she considered, given how his eyes had almost popped out of his head.  
“You really don’t know when to stop, _huh_?”  
“Hey, I didn’t mean to rattle your cage! Just asking out of concern for my Pop – we’ve been here for a couple of days but he seems really into his new job and I’d like to understand if he just got involved in something bigger than him, that’s all”  
“… Your father is the new vice mayor?!”  
“Right in the flesh” she nodded “He told me they were college pals but, I don’t know, there’s something odd about your father… Especially after the previous vice’s death, the coroner said it wasn’t that clear… I’m not accusing him of anything, just wondering if you perhaps happen to know something fishy”  
“I live in the fishiest of all slums, Arya” he had laughed bitterly, but she was too much focused on the way he had said her name to pay attention to his forced laughter – she found out she liked it a lot pronounced by him “But everybody in King’s Landing knows he has scattered children all over the city… and in near towns too”  
“Hmm, I see”  
“I could tell you how much of a shitty father he has been to me, but-”  
“… but you won’t, I get it” she gave him a sincere smile “and being a shitt-I mean, _awful_ father is not a crime… But yeah, that’s why I was in the neighborhood – looking out for my old man, hoping not to get caught with my hand in the cookie jar”  
“Seems to me you haven’t done a great job so far” he had remarked, finally roaring with laughter when she had jumped off the counter to give him a perfect hook in the stomach that had made him double over.  
Despite being bothered by his provocation and her inability of not rising to the bait, Arya Stark realized that she liked his carefree laughter very much.  
That thought made her feel less annoyed than before.

* * *

   
“So… who’s this Cal Trask fella?” he had casually asked her, sitting on the counter not so far from where she was standing.  
She immediately shot him a perplexed glance – a bit horrified too, as if he had just asked the High Sparrow if he could blaspheme all of the Seven inside the Great Sept of Baelor – then cleared her voice.  
“You… don’t know him?”  
“Should I?”  
“Well, the movie came out a year ago, so…”  
Oh, ok, she was talking about flicks; he liked them a lot but wasn’t able to watch many of them – most of the times he stayed in the garage to work on small failures for a little extra bread, and the few evenings he had a bit of time for himself were the ones when he hadn’t been able to save not even a couple of Washingtons.  
His friend Hot Pie worked as a box-office attendant at the small cinema in the square of Flea Bottom, the one where they still projected films from the 30s and 40s, but from time to time they slipped a contemporary one too.  
Sometimes he wasn’t too tired or too penniless either, and so he was able to enjoy something not necessarily made by the Marx Brothers – _gods, he loved those oddballs_.  
“Often too tight on the money to catch the movies,” he finally admitted with a smirk “but do tell me the plot”  
She eagerly did so, telling him the tale of the Trask brothers – _East Of Eden_ , that was the flick’s title – and little by little he seemed to remember bits of the film, like the urge of Cal to be accepted by his father or the inevitable comparison between him and his angelic brother Aron.  
“You… you have his eyes, the same melancholy” she had suddenly muttered in a whisper, her cheeks now violently red, and for a moment he wondered how kissing this little rascal would have been.  
Just for a moment, but he had thought about it all the same.  
  
“Thanks,” he had added after a while, trying not to stumble over his own words “must mean the world, comin’ from ya”  
“Oh, _these_ ” Arya had gestured towards her clothes “Yeah, big fan of him… still can’t believe he died like that”  
“Shame, he seemed pretty…” he looked for a word that could do him justice, dismissing ‘cool’ as too trivial and cursing himself for dropping out of school in the middle of 8th grade “… uhm, pretty _valid_ ”  
The girl had given him a smile full of gratitude and quickly proceeded to drag him into a conversation about movies: she had told him of her insane passion for gangster pictures and noir films, and he had retorted with his love for westerns and Marx Brothers flicks; she admired Brando, Clift and all those newcomers that immersed themselves into the characters they played, while he tended to prefer fellas like Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power… then they both agreed that Bogie and Bette Davis were simply unequalled and silently rejoiced for that understanding, their mutual respect for each other slowly continuing to grow.  
Gendry had never been a chatterbox – he usually mulled over the words to say, then kept silent because the moment to let them out of his mouth had already passed and gone – but he realized that with Arya it was different: she enjoyed talking a lot, that was true, but also seemed prone to listen to whatever he had in mind, and that was something that only his mother would do.  
Right now the girl had rushed headlong into a detailed description of her current situation: she had moved to King’s Landing with her father and older sister Sansa, the latter quite the opposite of herself – being fond of dates at the ice cream parlor, Rock Hudson, circle skirts and musicals (“in that exact order”, she had pointed out in an annoyed way, but she cared about her just the same) – and was a bit worried about the imminent start of her Senior year as the new kid on the block.  
“Which school you’re gonna attend?”  
“The one near the Great Sept of Baelor, they told dad that they highly value education-” she stopped when she noticed his furrowed expression “Should I get worried?”  
“What? No, no – just a religious school full of snobbish lads and paper shakers, no gringles”  
“Great, then I’ll fit perfectly” she sighed, and he gave her a warm smile.  
“You can handle yourself, no sweat”  
“Why, thank you” Arya had grinned, her cheeks slightly red “You’re quite the apple butter, ain’t you?”  
He had immediately flustered, a flock of butterflies landing in his stomach when she had let out a silvery laugh.  
Luckily, she had quickly decided not to torment him and went on with the account of her large family: the red jacket she was wearing was a gift from her beloved cousin Jon – who had enlisted in the army just a week before, and her father had left the family firm in the hands of Robb, the responsible firstborn; back in Winterfell, her hometown up in Michigan, she had also left her mother and two younger brothers, Bran and Rickon – almost as different as Sansa and herself, with the first being a kid wiser than his years and the latter desperately in need of being tied up to a chair if their mother wanted him to behave in a civil manner.  
He found himself wishing he could meet the Starks just once, they seemed decent people to spend some time with… _maybe Thanksgiving too_.  
For the umpteenth time, Gendry blushed.

* * *

  
“In the winter we always go ice-skating on a small lake not so far from our house, but it usually begins to snow already at the end of October, even if then it’s most sleet that melts in the twinkling of an eye” Arya kept on chattering about home, talking surely made her feel less homesick than she wanted to admit to herself. “Oh! Ever seen the snow?”  
“Nope, never”  
“That’s strange, I couldn’t imagine myself not seeing snow… not even once?” she asked again, and Gendry gave her a withering look that made her bite her tongue. “You know what? Never worn a tee at the end of September before now, guess we’re even”  
“… I guess we are” he finally conceded, letting out a relaxed laugh (she mentally praised herself for that outcome) “We Louisiana folks, we’re used to humidity and short winters, but snow – that ain’t included among our habits”  
The girl tried to summon up other memories to keep their chit-chat going but, to her surprise – and it seemed to his own too – it was Gendry who spoke first.  
He told her of when he had been forced to drop out of middle school because his mother worked as a waitress and wasn’t able to support both of them, of his will to open a garage on his own in the posh area of King’s Landing – even if his dream in life was actually to study Mechanical Engineering in Oldtown, and of how much _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ – and, to some extent, all of Flynn’s swashbuckler flicks – had meant to him as a child, growing up in a godforsaken place like that.  
“For some time I was quite obsessed with _The Mark of Zorro_ too, I always begged the old box-office attendant to sneak me in during every single projection – sometimes I bugged him enough to succeed” a fond smile had found its way on his lips “Pity he’s been dead for a few years, but at least I have Hot Pie”  
“Hot Pie…?”  
“A friend of mine, he works at the small cinema here in Flea Bottom”  
“Oh, I see – does he still go to school?”  
“Nope, dropped out like me, but I believe he’s around your age”  
“And you would be…?”  
“Twenty, by the end of December”  
Arya bit the inside of her cheek: too old to pay attention to her?  
(As a friend, _of course_.)  
She could try asking Sansa what she thought about it, but then she wouldn’t hear the end of it… _what to do?_  
“Maybe sometimes the two of you could meet, he often comes here before or after his shift-” he abruptly stopped himself, his handsome features suddenly tensing “… that was stupid of me, I’m sorry”  
“… For what?”  
“For thinking that you’ll come here some other day too” and, thus said, he jumped off the counter and went again near the car. “I’d better check on the blown fuse and replace it quickly; you have already spent enough time here, that’s no place to stay after the sunset”  
“And what about before the sunset?” she had blurted out, her face already reddening, and he had looked a bit taken aback.  
“C’mon, Arya – your old man’s car will be okay… why would you possibly want to come back?” he had almost laughed.  
Almost.  
_Because of you?_  
None of them had had the courage to say it out loud.

* * *

  
The clock above the counter said 7pm when Gendry finally started the Chevrolet up; the engine purred like a happy cat, making him grin.  
“So, how much do I owe you?” she had suddenly asked, rummaging into her pockets, but he had shook his head.  
“Don’t be stupid, the shop’s not yours”  
She had a fair point: he told her the first sum that had come to his mind and accepted the few banknotes she handed him, their hands briefly brushing – _were they both shaking_?  
  
Arya Stark didn’t seem to be good at saying goodbye: he could sense it through her posture, the constant tinkling that the car keys made between her fingers or the way she was chewing the inside of her cheek, as if she was mulling over something to tell him.  
Gendry Waters wasn’t born a chatterbox, but he could pride himself on a keen talent for observation; when the girl had looked like she was finally ready to spill the beans, he had taken a deep breath and interrupted her.  
“It’s alright, Arya”  
“But I-” she had stopped again, torturing the lower lip with her teeth. “I know it’s stupid, but-”  
“S’not stupid,” he had offered her a tentative smile “it just had to go like this”  
The girl had nodded, head bowed, and finally disappeared inside the car.  
“Good luck with all of _this_ ,” she had gestured towards the surrounding mess “and life too, Gendry. Take care of yourself”  
“I will – you do the same, and do not get caught by your father”  
“I’ll try to” she had smiled in a bittersweet way that had knocked the breath out of him, and then the car had slowly started to move. “… Goodbye”  
He had watched her go away, a hand raised in a silent farewell.

* * *

  
Had they been two other people, he would have liked to take her out for dinner and then the movies – maybe at the end of the night she would have also let him give her a proper kiss, like ol’ Errol and Tyrone were always able to do in whatever part they played.  
He needed just one role, one single role to make all of that happen, but eventually it wasn’t meant to be.  
_Maybe, in another life…_ he thought, when a door slammed just outside the garage and made him jump.  
“The hell-”  
“Nymeria!” a well-known figure came inside the shop like a typhoon, knocking him down “Why haven’t I thought of that before?”  
“Nym-what?” he had slowly got up, helped by her.  
“ _Nymeria_ , my dog! Didn’t I tell you that-oh, whatever!” she had taken his hands and he could feel his ears boiling ( _again_ ). “Who needs a car when you got a dog to take out for a walk?”  
“Arya, I don’t think that’s a good-”  
“Oh, c’mon! I don’t know anybody here except you – might as well take my dog with me, while we’re at it”  
He talked her out of it, told her she had been lucky enough not to have been robbed the first minute she had set foot in Flea Bottom, made her reason – and then, it had been puppy eyes and a ‘Gendry, please… until school hasn’t begun, then…’.  
_… then it’ll be too late_ , he had thought.  
“… Alright”  
_He had tried._

* * *

  
“Ok, now that we’re settled… would you please just get that Chevy back home? Possibly without creaming it?”  
“Alright, Gramps”  
They were outside the shop, where Arya had left the car – _right in the middle of the road, typical_.  
Even the half-light couldn’t hide the fact that Gendry had looked daggers at her because of the nickname she had just given him.  
“Boy, what a fruitcake you are!” the girl had mocked him, making her way to the car, but then had stopped abruptly and quickly turned herself.  
“Look, what do you-”  
“Ya know, I was think-”  
They looked at each other and burst into laughter.  
“You go first”  
“No, you”  
“C’mon, I was first!”  
“Exactly, and that’s why you’re gonna _speak up first_ ”  
Arya tried not to give him the satisfaction of making her smile but failed in doing so. Again.  
“Alright,” she snorted, a lopsided smile still tugging at her lips “I was saying ‘Look, what do you say if sometime we catch a movie together? In a couple of months _Giant_ will come out, so I thought that we could have watched it together – or it could be another film, we don’t have to wait all that time to go out, just the two of us… I mean, as friends and if that’s okay with you, of course’… Gods, I sound like a total idiot”  
“No, you don’t” he had grinned, reaching her and making her hand slip into his “I was actually about to tell ya that they’re doing a marathon of screwball comedies where Hot Pie works, and how much I’d like to take you there – _if that’s okay with you, of course_ ”  
Her hand squeezed his own tightly and she nodded with a toothy grin – maybe, after all, today was really meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> So yep, here I am again in the mighty ASOIAF/GoT fandom, staining him with my insane ideas :'D  
> Just a couple of quick clarifications and then I’ll leave you guys to a looong list of terms and facts about the 50s, just to make you understand my lil’ shitty fanfiction better :D  
> The story takes place at the end of September, 1956: Arya is a 17 y.o. gal from Michigan (her birthday is in April), while Gendry is almost 20 and lives near New Orleans (my original head-canon is that King’s Landing is not located there, but whatever)... Oh, I haven’t decided where Oldtown is yet, so that’s that.  
> Thanks to whoever’s gonna leave a comment, kudos or simply read: have a nice day!


End file.
